England's Bowlers

In the England-India stenchfest thread last week, Furball asked how many bowlers had had a series in Australia this century that stood up to Anderson's. Cribbage posted a link from statsguru but because I am better than him I have improved this query and sorted by series.

What's my point? Sure this is a pissweak Australian batting line-up, but given the expectations of how our guys would go, it is quite something. Bresnan second on the list, Anderson third, and Tremlett fourth, if sorted by average. Sort by wickets taken and Anderson and Tremlett stay near the top as well, but obviously Anderson has an advantage over most on that one because he played five games; at the same time that tells you what an effort it is to maintain an average like that, over five Tests, a series length no other fast bowler has dealt with in the last year or so (since the last Ashes basically).

I always tend to take bowling averages with a pinch of salt; I certainly don't think Bresnan had a better series than Steyn did a couple of years back. Nonetheless, if you want to know why we won three games by an innings, this is a good place to start.

Bresnan's stats are very impressive 25 maidens from 82 overs going at 2.6 rpo, I bet he can't believe how it's gone for him this series. I don't know if it's down to Saker, or a confidence thing, but all the bowlers, maybe with the exception of Finn, were unbelievably accurate and the skills they brought to the table, by all of them were outstanding. The speed they got the ball reversing was great, sometimes as early as the 15th over and whether with it be the new or the old ball, Jimmy made it talk, which moving into the future, especially abroad will be a key asset . Even Tremlett, who you wouldn't think would be able to reverse the ball, got it going brilliantly, that over he bowled towards the end of day 4 of the 5th test, where he got Haddin and Johnson, was a thing of beauty.

What I've found so good about Anderson's series is that he's taken almost 5 wickets per Test - despite taking no more than 4 wickets in an innings. You would expect a bowler taking that number of wickets to have had at least one outstanding Test like the one Johnson had.

As an aside, England's attack was the only Test attack to average under 30 last year.

I think you're really clutching at straws if you think the scoreline automatically means that the gap between India and Australia in that series was bigger than the gap between England and Australia in this one. Anyone who actually watched both would tell you that's a long long long way from the truth.

Think we need to dig up a few pre-Ashes posts on this subject because people have only started calling the Watto/Katich/Ponting/Clarke/Hussey/xx/Haddin top seven "pissweak" since England owned their poor little souls. If anyone had used that label before the series everyone would have laughed and called them a bell-end. The exact same batsmen had been taking visiting attacks apart in Australia for years. But I guess that's what a world-class attack does to reputations.

Originally Posted by indiaholic

Ireland on the other hand are everything that is good and just and beautiful in this world.